A record of my journey through yarn projects

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Tag Archives: Granny pattern

I’m trying to remember how old these pieces are. (The photo looks pretty old, but I assure you, I clicked it just yesterday using a retro camera app on my phone. Very retro, indeed! 😀 ) I almost can’t recall when I made these, but they’re at least a couple of years old. I can say for sure that I had just learned about granny patterns and knew squat about magic loops, because I remember being not too happy with the holes in the middle of the granny squares but letting it slide.

I crocheted the squares from leftover yarn, and used whip stitch to tie them together. For the edging, I used two rounds of double crochet.

I’d made these so they can be brought together and fashioned into a clutch purse. And guess what — they’re still awaiting their destiny! 🙂 (Okay, I guess that’s the wrong smiley to use here; this might just be my work-in-progress-for-so-long-that-i-have-almost-forgotten-about-it project…) It’s now sitting with my current work-in-progress project so it keeps reminding me of its presence. Maybe one of these days…

That’s what I felt when I started working on a placemat using my stashes of tan and black light weight yarn. And that’s what I feel after I’m all done with the piece. The colors just complement each other so beautifully.

I’d like to acknowledge Kara at Petals and Picots for her photo-filled tutorials on granny hexagons and joining them as you go. I’d never have finished the piece so quickly if not for her instructions making it so easy and fun. Kara also has another tutorial for the edging, but I used my own, and I’m not disappointed! 🙂

How I made it

I made my hexagons exactly like Kara shows, but with only two colors. I started with (2dc, ch1) x 6 in a magic ring using my tan yarn. I then made (2dc in chain-space, ch1, 2dc in same chain-space, ch1) x 6 with my black yarn. Switching back to tan yarn, I made (2dc in corner chain-space, ch1, 2dc in same chain-space, ch1, 2dc in next chain-space, ch1) x 6. Finally, I used my black yarn as the single-crochet join-as-you-go edging to the hexagon. I made 7 such hexagons, joining them as I made them. I single crocheted around the hexagon bunch, making (1sc, ch1, 1sc) at the convex corners and (sc 2tog) at the concave corners. That made all the black edgings look uniform.

For the overall edging, I made double crochets, one color per round. For the first round, I made (1dc, ch1, 1dc) at the convex corners and (dc 2tog) at the concave ones. For round two, I made (1 dc, ch2, 1dc) at the convexes, and (dc 2tog) at the concaves. For the last double-crochet round, I made (1dc, ch1, 1dc, ch1, 1dc) at the convexes and (dc 2tog) at the concaves. The final row in edging is a single crochet one, with (1sc in chain-space, ch1, 1sc in same chain-space) at the gaps in the convex corners and (sc 2tog) at the concave corners. Here’s a closeup of the piece —

With careful weaving-in of the ends, the piece is quite the reversible one!

Blocking

It feels weird to acknowledge this, but I’ll say it — I’ve never blocked any piece I’ve knit or crocheted before. o_O There’s always a first time for everything though, right? So well, this is mine for the blocking process! 😀

After some research, I decided that wet blocking is best for this piece. I briefly wet the piece to dampen it, then laid it properly stretched out, using pins to keep its shape. After a day, the piece was dry, and, I must admit, much better-looking than it would have been without blocking. Need I say that I’m going to block everything I knit or crochet from now on? :p

And now, the placemat has found its purpose in life — preventing dust from coating our home phone! 🙂

Time to talk about decorative pieces! And scrap yarn! And how scrap yarn is wonderful for making colorful decorative pieces!

The inevitability of working on a yarn project is that after the project ends, there’s yarn left over. The problem is always that this yarn is too less to use for the usual projects, but too much to throw away — blame it on our accurate yardage measurements… 😉 The solution? Collect scrap yarn from a whole lot of projects and use them together to make something colorful and decorative! And what better to work with various colors than the beautiful granny pattern? Granny patterns have had their highs and lows in the crochet fashion world, but not many can deny the prettiness of things made by attaching small granny squares together.

Decorative piece — Scrap yarn and Granny pattern

This is a decorative piece that I made from scrap yarn — a red-to-brown self-striping yarn, a blue-to-green self-striping yarn, and a regular green yarn — left over from three different projects. I started out with 2 rows of granny circles, then began morphing it into a square. The granny pattern here has one chain stitch between every 3 crochet stitches, and two chain stitches at the corners of the square. As is evident, I’ve used not only double crochet stitches but also half-double crochet stitches; and some rows are not even granny patterns, they’re just regular single crochet stitches. To put it mildly, I just went crazy with this piece. I finally stopped only when I finished two of the three yarns.

I can’t wait to finish more yarn projects so I can go crazy again! It’s soo fun and satisfying… 🙂